3. The allophone set
As you may have noticed, there are basically two sorts of allophone symbols, those that occur as single characters and those that have several characters enclosed by brackets. It is necessary to enclose some in brackets because "aa" for instance, is a different sound to "(aa)".
Here is a complete list of all the allophones. Try them to hear what they sound like by running this short program:
10 INPUT a$: LET s$=a$: PAUSE 120 IF s$(TO 1)="?" THEN PRINT "You have made a mistake"30 IF a$="stop" THEN STOP40 GOTO 10
Now whenever you come across an allophone you would like to hear, simply enter it when the "L" prompt is given and the unit will say it for you. In the following table, the allophone symbols are shown on the left, with examples of the sounds on the right:
1. PHONETIC allophones:
All single characters |
All sound phonetic |
a-z excepting x and q |
e.g. like "a" in at, "b" in tab, etc. |
2. DOUBLE-VOWEL allophones:
(aa) or (ay) |
"ay" in hay |
(ee) |
"ee" in see |
(ii) |
"i" in hive |
(oo) or (eau) |
"o" in stove |
3. STRONG PHONETIC allophones (used at the start of words or where extra emphasis is required):
(bb) |
"b" in bat |
(dd) |
"d" in do |
(gg) |
"g" in got |
(ggg) |
"g" in big |
(hh) |
"h" in hoe |
(ll) |
"l" in let |
(nn) |
"n" in no |
(rr) |
"r" in run |
(tt) |
"t" in to |
(yy) |
"y" in yeah |
4. COMPLEX ALLOPHONES:
(ar) |
"ar" in arm |
(aer) |
"air" in repair |
(ch) |
"ch" in church |
(ck) |
"ck" in clock |
(ear) |
"ear" in clear |
(eh) |
"ar" in wary |
(er) |
"er" in leader |
(err) |
"ur" in purr |
(ng) |
"ng" in tongue |
(or) |
"or" in sore |
(ou) |
"oo" in root |
(ouu) |
"oo" in food |
(ow) |
"ow" in now |
(oy) |
"oy" in boy |
(sh) |
"sh" in ship |
(th) |
"th" in thin |
(dth) |
"th" in then |
(uh) |
"oo" in took |
(wh) |
"wh" in whig |
(zh) |
"z" in azure |
5. PAUSES
apostrophe |
very short pause - e.g. in can't |
space |
pause between words |
comma |
pause between phrases |
full stop |
pause between sentences |
X and Q are missing from the set as the speech sound they make may be made from combinations of other allophones - this is the key to allophone synthesis. For instance, the word "queen" may be made by "kw(ee)n" and the word "box" by "boks".
Certain allophones run together well, for example:
LET s$="aaaaaaaa"
Comes out as a single "Aahhh" sound. Other allophones that exhibit this property are e, i, o, u, f, s, (eh), (th) and (uh).
To help you see how words are built up, here are some examples from the keyvoices:
Keyvoice |
Voiced by using: |
|---|---|
AT |
a(tt) |
' |
apostruf(ee) |
= |
(ee) (ck)wulz |
NEW |
ny(ouu) |
SIN |
s(ii)n |
CODE |
c(oo)d |
ACS |
(ar)c'coz |
STRING |
stri(ng) |
CIRCLE |
s(er)cul |
LLIST |
e(ll)'list |
SAVE |
s(ay)'v |
5 |
f(ii)v |
H |
(ay) (ch) |
LOG |
lo(ggg) |
THEN |
(dth)en |
MERGE |
m(err)dj |
You can see that a little care is needed to think in terms of how words are spoken rather than how they are written, but with a little practice you will be able to build up words very fast with few mistakes.
Try making up some words of your own now, and making short phrases using the various pauses to divide the words up. You should also try LISTing the BASIC demonstration program supplied with the unit to see how the various sentences are generate on that.